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A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of network communications and, more particularly, with configuring network devices having standard interfaces.
B. Description of Related Art
The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is used by devices that are connected to networks, such as the Internet, to obtain parameters and make it possible for the devices to communicate on the Internet. The devices perform the DHCP protocol by querying a DHCP server during the initialization procedure performed by the device at boot up. Once the DHCP server responds with the appropriate parameters, the devices may begin to communicate by sending and receiving packets on the Internet.
The parameters that a device may obtain using the DHCP include an Internet Protocol address (IP address), a list of domain name servers, a domain name, the lease time of the IP address, a default gateway for the device, a trivial file transfer protocol (TFTP) server address and TFTP file name. The DHCP has been adopted by the industry as a standard protocol that is documented in RFC 2131. The RFC 2131 describes the many parameters that may be obtained from the DHCP server. The RFC 2131 also describes instructions for communicating with the DHCP server.
The devices that communicate over the Internet typically use standard off-the-shelf operating systems such as Windows 95, Windows NT, Unix, etc. These operating systems may include a complete network communications architecture that simplifies the connection between a communications application and the drivers that the application uses to communicate with the network. For example, the Windows operating system from Microsoft includes a standard interface for network interface cards (NIC). The standard interface includes hardware drivers and any protocol drivers that may be used by the application to communicate with other applications over the Internet.